When you visit the Google’s chatbot bard’s website in Microsoft Bing. A New Button pops up besides the search bar which lets you compare bard results with Bing chat’s. I have no idea why they implemented this, well maybe to show off the their chatbot is better than bard or something?
Microsoft needs another good antitrust lawsuit. They’re so aggressive about pushing their products.
I haven’t heard many other people complain about it so it was probably a very short term thing, but I’ll never forget when they updated windows defender to identify the chrome installer as highest-threat malware so that its download would be blocked, and if you forced the download windows would instantly delete the installer for your own protection.
So does Google imo.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta. Pretty much all the big tech companies really need a visit from the FTC.
Honestly the FTC should be handing out antitrust suits like candy. Late stage capitalism has created a bit of a target rich environment, if only the FTC could take advantage.
Courts have been blocking them consistently. They’ve been a touch more aggressive, but Congress needs to pass more aggressive laws. Many of these companies are vertically integrated, not horizontally - and the laws aren’t really equipped to deal with that.
Why not Apple, the closest company to having a monopoly on software running on smart phones in the USA.
Apple and Google have both done similar things. Osx will ask you to use safari if you install a different browser. Google shows “it’s better in chrome!” on basically all of their properties if you’re using non chromium based browsers. No one seems to really give a shit.
How is Meta acting anti competitive? I am not defending them, just actually curious. For Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple it makes sense because they control the platforms.
Honestly the way Microsoft handles things rubs me worse than Google. It’s specifically the way that Microsoft watches what you do, and then tries to stop and convince you to use their stuff instead. And they don’t respect you saying no once, instead trying to stop you at every step in the process.
Google does the same.
I don’t use Chrome. Every single time I go to any Google service, it tells me I need to be using Chrome. It doesn’t take “no” for an answer; it’s a constant nag.
Google Docs especially gets mad and doesn’t even let you paste without formatting.
Use Firefox
If they’re still using Edge at this point, you’re wasting your breath.
we have windows 11 on our work machines. The OS and Office 365 apps are forcing more and more links to open in Edge instead of the default browser. Microsoft has been fined in the past over their push for Internet Explorer (at least in the EU), but what they are doing now has already become much worse.
Is it me, or is that pretty anti consumer?
No more anti-consumer than Google saying that “the internet is best experienced in chrome” every time you open YouTube or Google search.
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Well, they also mangle/limit the Google Search on Firefox for Android. If you change your useragent to Chrome, it will show just fine, so it’s not issue with Firefox, it’s deliberate.
DDG has better results anyway
Google’s results these days are shit. The other day I googled an exact terraform resource and included “terraform” in my search query. The first result should’ve been the page for that resource in terraform’s documentation, but that page wasn’t in the results at all. What was there was a blogspam copy of said page.
Google has stop paying attention to it’s own search commands. I can +search term in my search and it will still bring up the same results it brought up in the previous search that made me include the + in the first place, even when I know results with that term exist.
Also if it decides you’ve typo’d, it often no longer gives you the option to search for the exact thing you typed. It used to say “did you mean __________?” and you could click a link to search for the exact word it thins you mistyped. It now often doesn’t give you that option anymore.
Doesn’t DDG just use Bing?
No, they operate their own crawlers.
Per https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/:
We also maintain our own crawler (DuckDuckBot) and many indexes to support our results. Of course, we have more traditional links and images in our search results too, which we largely source from Bing. Our focus is synthesizing all these sources to create a superior search experience.
Yeah, I forget about that until I get a new phone and have to reinstall that extension…
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Just gives you a limited interface. The menu on left side is completely gone, voice search is missing, Google Lens is missing, you can’t search by tags.
This add-on fixes it by changing useragent to Chrome when browsing Google: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-fixer/ which makes Firefox contribute to Chrome marketshare.
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Weird to think now that Google used to have Customized Firefox search page.
Don’t you think it’s different if Google says this on their own sites vs Microsoft showing this when visiting their competitors?
Both isn‘t good. But I feel like one of those is clearly worse.
at that point i consider it a microsoft tradition to do the “hey, i see you’re using Y, we have a similar product called Z and it’s better, do you want to try it?”-routine no one asked for.
“No one asked for this” should be Microsoft’s tag line. Rather than fix problems that have been around for years - decades in some cases - they just keep adding crap that no one wants or asked for.
Everything from Microsoft or Google is anti everyone.
It’s also shameless and pathetic.
Being offered a second option and not having a monopoly is as consumer friendly as it gets, may I suggest a dictionary?
Except they are using the power they have with people using their browser to divert people away from the alternative to their product.
Using your own product to advertise others? How dare they. Are you also angry theyre using windows to advertise onedrive? Lmao
Consider it payback for when Google kept shilling chrome everywhere back then
That’s how I saw it.
When I did web dev, I was losing it when I saw my fellow devs adding things like “This site works better on Chrome” and giving Chrome free marketing.
“This site designed for Netscape Navigator”
Eh, I’d rather promote Firefox any day over Chromium-based browsers
Bundled with every installer in existence with the checkbox checked-on by default.
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PLEASE USE OUR PRODUCTS WE BEG YOU
Not really one to defend Google, but Microsoft is out of line on this (and a lot of other stuff they do). Sadly our Congresspeople are pretty much owned by these corps and won’t do anything about it.
~~You mean like when you visit a Google service (Gmail, Google, Maps …) on a non Chrome browser it bugs incessantly to switch?
It’s pervasive and it stinks, but it’s not Microsoft. It’s our current capitalist gestalt.~~
EDIT: I’ll be damned: It’s not on Google anymore … I either imagined it, or they removed their nagging. My bad. Thanks to the commenters who pointed it out.
Never had this happen on Firefox yet.
I should have tested before posting. you are right - it’s not there right now. I edited my comment
Does Firefox even have any other service beside their broswer which they could use for such a promotion?
Yes, Mozilla also has Hubs, vpn, Pocket and more
Pocket is one where I wish Firefox Mobile had integration instead of needing a separate app.
Either I’ve just gotten blind for these messages, or it has never happened to me. I’m using Firefox and have been using it for years, but so far I haven’t really noticed these messages at all on Google services.
I should have tested before posting. you are right - it’s not there right now. I edited my comment
I’ve been using Firefox for years to access Google services, and have never ever had a single issue. I hope it stays this way, with all this Web Environment Integrity shenanigans they are pushing for at the moment.
You did not imagine that. I remember back when Google was being obnoxious about that. They cut it out years ago though, possibly after some bad pr over it.
I’ve never had this happen to me, and I’ve been on firefox for over 8 years at this point
It happens on Edge but not Firefox I believe. My work laptop defaults to Edge (and we use all Microsoft Web services so I haven’t cared to switch the default) and Google services prompt to try Chrome there.
Edit: I just checked and it doesn’t seem to be there. Either I imagined it or they removed it.
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I should have tested before posting. you are right - it’s not there right now. I edited my comment
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Google left their “do no harm” motto in the dust long ago and is one of the largest internet monopolies of all time. Both companies suck in that regard.
But yeah, google search is getting worse and worse every day.
Microsoft now has implemented “compare with Bing chat” button when you visit Google Bard in Edge
That title has so many brand names I feel like I’m reading infinite jest
FTFY
Microsoft now has implemented “compare with Microsoft Bing Chat™, an AI search engine powered by OpenAI GPT-4™” button when you visit Alphabet’s Google Bard™ in Microsoft Edge™©®
I hate big tech. I hate big tech.
The AI hype is getting to be even worse than the NFT hype
While bard got some really bad reviews compared to chatgpt, I’ve honestly found it better with queries chatgpt struggled with. I have two examples:
- “Please write a python function that returns an exact solution to pi” Both come up with gregory-leibnitz formula, which of course is an approximation. When challenged that I want an exact solution instead of an approximation, chatgpt apologizes and then returns yet another approximation. Bard correctly claims that that is impossible as pi is an irrational number.
- “What can you tell me about a compound called polysac-active in cough syrups”. Chatgpt hallucinates something about a company in Indonesia, which seems to have a product that sounds vaguely similar to one of the brands selling that compound. Bard, on the other hand, correctly surmises it’s mostly honey and even gives some examples of real products that feature this ingredient.
In general, Bard in general seems one of the few llms that will tell me it doesn’t know something or that something is impossible. IMHO that’s better than just coming up with a hallucination.
I had kinda the opposite experience using Bard. It made up random technical details for the questions I asked. It assured me that it knew the contents of a document that it didn’t have access to and generated what it claimed was information from that document rather than saying it couldn’t read it and didn’t know.
Same. Found it to be better with some and worse work others. With some of those where it provides worse results compared to ChatGPT it just feels like it’s missing the fine tuning. It provides pretty similar results as when ChatGPT 3.5 came out a while ago. People just tend to forget about it.
Bing lets me use their AI chatbot search without creating an account.
Bing wins.
Interesting, it seems to want me to install Edge. That’s a hard pass.
Nice try, Microsoft.
“…but as the company grew and became more…”
Evil
I liked Edge whilst it was in beta. It was just another browser. Now it’s a browser caked with Microsoft services so they do their best to try to get you to use it. Even Outlook now opens links in Edge, yes ignoring your default browser settings, unless you go into Outlook and unconfigure it. Fuck off Microsoft.
That outlook setting is such a load of crap. Your two choices are “Microsoft Edge” or “Default Browser”. Why even have that setting at all? Just use the default browser!
You have no idea why? Really? It’s to get people thinking about / trying bing.
It’s all advertising.
We’re going to enter another search engine (read chatbot) war.
Just wait until Google manages to bust out the internet DRM they’ve proposed. Then things will really get bad.
We almost need an entirely different internet at this point. Start over, we fucked up.
Gemini exists and the protocol is designed to be hard to extend deliberately, but it serves documents as a markdown-like format instead of modern html/css/js
To be fair that could be a lot worse. I was expecting injected webpage content. I think this is acceptable and serves as a quick way to compare multiple sources. I dislike that it’s Microsoft more than I do the actual “feature”.
It’s not very far away from injecting it into a webpage though. I feel like at this point it wouldn’t make any difference. Except on a meta level.
Just wait until they open a little popup or sidebar with bing search results every time you search on Google, DuckDuckGo or whatever competitor.
